


fate (or whatever you want to call it)

by Rupzydaisy



Series: the haruspices sing on [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen, Lee as a Time Lord, Pre-Series, an airy chat about the weight of fate, it's all in the time lines, time lord au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22255984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: Lee flies high, higher than he's done in some time, until the clouds are sparse and the sky is dark and endless and it reminds him how much things have changed and how they haven't. He leans against the gently swaying basket and looks out on it all. Up here, it feels more like he's gone and left the door or a window open in his TARDIS and he can look out to watch worlds fly by. His gloved hands pass over the controls and his fingers itch, wishing there was an entire console underneath with the live, thrumming heart of his TARDIS below.Because there is not.There are no timelines to dip his hands into and no vast multi spiral galaxies to slingshot across. It's only Earth air, and a ceiling of blue until it fades into the black edge of the upper stratosphere, and the reminder of it is like two giant weights attached to each of his hearts. Still, when he looks out at the modicum of vastness this earth has to offer to him, he finds his balance once more.
Relationships: Lee Scoresby & Hester, Serafina Pekkala & Lee Scoresby
Series: the haruspices sing on [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609966
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	fate (or whatever you want to call it)

**Author's Note:**

> i've done it, i've crowbarred my two great fandom loves together :) so here’s a hdm/doctor who fic where lee scoresby is a time lord

Lee flies high, higher than he's done in some time, until the clouds are sparse and the sky is dark and endless and it reminds him how much things have changed and how they haven't. He leans against the gently swaying basket and looks out on it all. Up here, it feels more like he's gone and left the door or a window open in his TARDIS and he can look out to watch worlds fly by. His gloved hands pass over the controls and his fingers itch, wishing there was an entire console underneath with the live, thrumming heart of his TARDIS below. 

Because there is not. 

There are no timelines to dip his hands into and no vast multi spiral galaxies to slingshot across. It's only Earth air, and a ceiling of blue until it fades into the black edge of the upper stratosphere, and the reminder of it is like two giant weights attached to each of his hearts. Still, when he looks out at the modicum of vastness this earth has to offer to him, he finds his balance once more. 

Up in the air, further off in the distance, there is a darker scrap of black against the dark blue of dusk. He presumes it’s a bird until it draws closer, and then it's clear it's too large. For a moment, he considers it to be an errant cliff-ghast, caught in an upward spiral of air, until he notices that its flight is too elegant and too direct to be anything other than a witch. As she approaches, he sees the lightning scar along her arm and the crown of small red flowers in her hair, and beside him Hester’s ears flick up, unnerved by the urgency in the air. He feels his daemon edge forwards underneath the balloon with her small, dark eyes look up to the sky, searching for Kaisa.

Lee watches Serafina fly straight and true, slicing through the winds and as she draws close, her disturbed expression. It makes his fingers twitch closer to his hip holster, even though there’s no immediate danger. Witches, as a whole, were slower to be moved by emotion, though when they were it was like watching a dam being broken. He had once seen a witch and her hawk daemon flying over the ocean, overcome with the desire for revenge, her face twisted with scorn, and he had shoved his entire weight against the rudder of his little balloon with every gram of self-preservation in his body. 

If Serafina was a human, he imagines that she might have been winded from the effort of flying so high, so fast. “I got a feeling this ain’t a social visit, Hester.”

"Mr Scoresby." 

She greets him with a small incline of her neck as she comes to a halt at the side of the basket, drifting motionless with her cloud-pine branch in her hand. It's a sight that never ceases to awe. Witches, on this earth, had the ability to fly just with a piece of tree gripped in their fist. It beat coaxing a TARDIS to grow onto a frame for a couple centuries, and he imagines there's a magic to simply letting her feet leave the ground with only a thought. 

"Serafina Pekkala." He tips his hat to her while awkwardly brushing a hand behind his back in a sorry attempt to tidy up. 

A few items rattle as they hit the floor, and he winces because he _used_ to have a broom and a garbage cupboard by the TARDIS front door so that he could do a quick sweep and shove everything inside. It was easy as anything to run the brush around the room and then shut the door behind it before any guests walked in. 

Now he could toss things overboard, but he'd look mighty funny while doing it and besides, the witch-queen doesn’t seem the sort to share his sense of humour. She was too proper for that. And the royalty title wasn't anything to sniff at. The bearing was in every inch of her, and every extension or movement. It reminded him of the Time Lord Council only she commanded more respect simply for the fact that she gave it too. 

They had learnt to share the skies whenever he returned to her part of the world, and it was nice to have the company. More than nice, even. 

"What brings you out here?" He asks, leaning against the side of the basket.

"I come with urgent news from the gathering. My sisters have touched the stars, and listened to the call on the black waves...and it is not joyous news, Lee."

There’s some hesitation as she raises her hand to sweep the dripping cloud-dew out of her cropped hair, and it slicks back the dark strands closer to her neck. While the movement was as smooth as the ripples of silk making up her dress, her eyes were dark and concerned. 

Lee tips his head at her marked frown, "What have you heard?

"We must prepare for war." 

She is white as a ghost, and it's unlike her to seem flustered or disconcerted. Yet her lips are a pale downcast slash against her face, and when she speaks again, he feels his shoulders dip under the implications she seems to assert, "You will be needed."

It makes him wonder exactly what kind of a war, because if she was this unsettled by the news of it, he could fill his pockets up. Witches were terrific fighters and their clans would often go to war for land, or for their ideals, or sometimes just for the heart-quickening of it all. Serafina was a good queen, she had spoken to him before about her wish for all her sisters to be united, and even in that he could see why some would want to stay outside of a larger clan. If the war was big enough, if the danger was high enough, he could ask for a higher price, and if he did his math right it could add up to in getting the right kind of materials for a new space drive. 

"How much are you paying?"

But she seems to baulk at his question, and zips around to the other side of the balloon. "Payment? You would ask for payment at the end of worlds?" 

It catches him off guard, but he knows he needs to make his point; no payment, no Lee. There was no sense in signing up for another war. Too much to walk away from after the last one, too much of his past, and too much of the corpse of his TARDIS he had to bury under the thick snow with his own hands. 

She knew all of that, and even then she was asking. He feels his heartbeats spike. The urge to flip a lever and engage a spacedrive is all he truly longs for, and when his gloved hand stretches out to touch the levers and buttons, they’re simply not the right ones. 

"You know...since my people died, my planet burned, the whole of time War put at risk in a futile war to end all creation...things have changed. I've _changed_ . I'm a new man, and _I only take cash_ ." He flashes a sardonic grin at her. "It keeps me in helium tanks and bacon. What _more_ could a man possibly want?" 

She is steadfast, more than any other person he'd ever met, and the composure that had slipped as she approached his balloon had returned. "War is coming, we must all prepare. It is our fate." 

"You might think it's petty and small, but trust me, in the grand scheme of things if you can put a price on it, then how bad could the hustle be?"

She shakes her head, and he thinks it must be easy for a witch to be this steady and stoic, to live out a longer than human lifespan like a tree growing slowly at the edge of a vast field, watching over. But a long life is still just that, and he's barely scratched the surface with eons ahead of him. With multiple regenerations in his pocket and a solemn promise to himself not to get tangled up in anything that seemed _too much_ it was easier to look at things from afar. Living the better part of his new life in a balloon helped with the distancing too. 

Lee Scoresby, the aeronaut, knew that wars come and go and the field burns. It dies off in harsh winters, and then grows green in spring. Time ticks on. 

It all passes.

The way it should. 

"Don’t get me wrong. I'll help, if you throw a bit of danger money my way. Oh, don't look at me like that Hester, we need the cash." 

His daemon sniffs and turns away, an ever-present, ever-viewable slice of his consciousness right there for all to see. He often wonders if she'll change shape when he regenerates again. Would the form and nature of a soul transform as he did? Becoming a new man each time seems to make him think she would, and yet, he also wonders what would happen if she doesn't. 

Her presence had originally been a little complication of sorts. 

As if flying and fighting through the heart of the Time War wasn't as soul-baring as anything, falling through a tear in the universe with a destroyed TARDIS and crossing the void had somehow torn his soul from his insides. He'd been without two working hearts before, but this was _worse_. 

It had been _excruciating_. 

Then to crash land in this universe on the icy wastes at the northern pole on Earth, barely alive with a grey-brown rabbit of some sort thumping its foot on his chest as he regenerated into a new man. One that the people here considered to be a Texan. _How about that?_

"Lee, you know how I feel about this. It's all fun and games until someone kicks the timelines the _wrong_ way." Hester chips in, pulling him back to the here and now. "Then what? You can't turn your back on who you _are_." 

"Fate. Destiny." He snorts and turns back to the witch, hands planted on his hips. "This lot here don't know the _meaning_ of those words. I've lived a long time, seen a lot of places too, and never have I ever seen a being quite so sure of herself as you, your Highness."

"There are whispers on the wind, Mr Scoresby. You and I cannot ignore them."

It was a bad kind of reminder, a bit like being slugged right in the gut, especially while knowing that he couldn't sail a little higher and then out onto the stars. He barely managed to salvage enough of his TARDIS to create a few viable cuttings. After that, it was just about playing the waiting game, but the feeling of being more or less grounded was like having nails driven into his feet. Not when there was a big, wide, beautiful sky above him. Not when he was used to tap dancing around the console room and feeling the whole of time and space unfold before him.

Winning the hot air balloon in a game of cards was the best thing that ever could have happened to him. He had crammed it with as much as he could scrape together out of the TARDIS' ruins, and it had given him enough of his old, true life back. After a few years, there was only one piece of the TARDIS’ cuttings that had survived, kept safely strapped into place. It's accompanied by a faint but familiar chime reaching out and touch his mind, old friend to old friend, ever a comfort. She's quietly growing, but there's the same sense of pride whenever he climbs into the basket with full pockets and a good story about his most recent adventures. One day, they know she'll take him to them. 

"I don't fly so high. Not anymore." 

Lee pulls at the wires around the ballast in his irritation. As if to make the point a little clearer, he reaches forward to cut the gas. The balloon dips gracefully through a layer of clouds that vanish almost immediately, ruining his emphasised descent. 

The witch follows, swooping through the air and the black silk of her wrapped dress flutters in the wind. "You cannot hide from the stars either."

"Oh boy." Hester mutters, hopping across the bottom of the basket. 

His face darkens, and he swings around the centre console to face her again. "Who are you to say what I can and can't do? Granted, you're the clan-queen of the Lake Enara witches, but I'm a Time Lord. Don't forget, up here I can hear things too! _And_ I can make sense of them." 

"I'll be seeing you again, Lee." She is impassive once more, detached under the weight of her years in the same way Time Lords of old had been, only there’s a bit more grit in her, when there had been a dispassionate emptiness to them. 

"Yes, you will.” Lee nods casually, even with his brow furrowed. “So long as you've brought that danger money that you promised." 

"Trollesund." Serafina replies with a final loop around the basket. "Perhaps there will be a different investment for you to make."

"Green paper or gold coin will do."

Lee looks away, down at the instruments on the centre with a burning concentration. It’s not enough. Like a firelight in the dark, her insistence breaks through. 

"What _is_ in Trollesund?" Hester asks for the both of them, knowing that he wouldn’t out of his pride. 

She was fond of the witch, enchanted by her passion and fierceness skimming underneath her cool composure. When Kaisa did appear, either with Serafina or flying past alone, they would spend time together, daemon to daemon, talking about things Lee couldn't hear. There were all sorts of trade secrets they could at least hint to each other and sharing helped had helped in the absence of a functioning TARDIS to whisper to during long nights floating across wide open skies. 

"Besides an old friend who requires your help?" Serafina leans in over the edge of the basket to whisper, the words for Lee's soul alone. "The fate of worlds, and a chance to heal the pain in your hearts."

Lee snorts again, for a lack of what to say, but Hester remains silent and her dark eyes are fixed on the witch. "Go on."

"The child is coming, a child who will change everything, and the safest pair of hands are your own. I trust you with that, this world and all the others do too."

"Don't bother, you can't change my mind. It's made up!" 

"Until next time, Time Lord."

He nods brusquely, his manners returning while his anger fades and then she's away; a flutter of illuminated silk against the night sky, leaving him and his soul alone under the silent stars while below, the last of the sun sets, and dusk turns to night. 

Sighing heavily, he completes another survey of the instruments and the routine allows him to think. There was something in the way she had spoken, less judgemental than he originally perceived, now that he reflected on it more. He was quick to brush her off, sticking to the same story he had for the past few decades, but when he looks down at Hester sitting on the bench, she too seems like she's buffeted on the winds of her thoughts. 

Her nose twitches in the cold air, and he drags down on the wires, tightening the slack and then pulling hard on the helium line to send a thick fiery stream into the balloon. 

They rise higher, into colder, crisper air. It’s thin, and his hearts have to work a little harder, but the view is worth it. Above him, the aurora has slipped more southwards than its usual arcs, and the sky is awash in thick bands of vivid green and lurid yellow. It paints a pretty picture, and he could compare it to the silver haze in the wild Mists of Karkom Four or the deep maroon lagoon pools in the Hijela Bidessert, but he doesn’t, because there was something in the sight of it that was incomparable. 

“She trusts you.” Hester tells him, and he stands with his arms crossed, coat lapels thrown up to keep the chill of his neck. “She's right, something changing." 

She hops down closer to him, paws clambering over his boots. "You can feel it too, can't you?"

He looks up, silent and in awe, and he kind of wants to kick himself because _how could I have been so stupid to not see this?_

There was something behind the wavering ribbons of light, something that he has to put every ounce of focus into seeing, into _looking_ properly. "They're converging, just like they did for the Time War, only this…is more, so much _more_ , Hester. I've not seen the timelines do it on a scale like this. I've not even _heard_ of it!"

He shuts his eyes against the dim light of the stars, holds his breath in his lungs as though he could taste the answers, and then exhales slowly. 

"I don't know what it means.” 

Although he’s reluctant to admit it, even to his own daemon, feeling the loss of his surety helps him understand exactly what had shaken the witch, and why she had flown so far and so fast to speak with him. He’s not the same man he once was, and war wasn’t something he wanted to meet head on, even if he could hold his own in a fistfight or a firefight. 

"Trollesund." Hester repeats, sniffing the cold air again. "A child. A war. The end of worlds...but for what?"

"I guess we'll be finding out." Lee replies as he turned the controls to take them around and cut the gas to the balloon to begin a slow descent back down to earth, and to Trollesund. “But it seems we’ve got to help an old friend first. Seeing as I haven’t got many of them in this world, I have a feeling we’re going to be repaying a debt, old gal.” 


End file.
